Before Meghan Markle met Prince Harry and became friends with such A-list celebrities as George and Amal Clooney, Serena Williams and Oprah ...
Before Meghan Markle met Prince Harry and became friends with such A-list celebrities as George and Amal Clooney, Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey, she was a minor American TV actress, struggling for notice on red carpets and for her next big professional opportunity.
That’s according to self-identified former friends in the British media, who tell the Daily Mail and other tabloids that her meeting Prince Harry was no accident.
These ex-friends told the Daily Mail that the Duchess of Sussex at 37, had become frustrated with how her career was proceeding in Hollywood. A self-described anglophile, Meghan began thinking about 2013 that the United Kingdom might be the place for her to be, an idea that eventually allowed her to maneuver into the right social circles where she and Harry would cross paths, these friends say.
“She told me she wanted to be on an English reality TV show and that she wanted an English boyfriend,” British TV presenter Lizzie Cundy told the Daily Mail.
Cundy said she and Meghan met at a 2013 charity gala, the same year that the “Suits” actress ended her two-year marriage to producer Trevor Engelson.
“Do you know any famous guys?” Cundy said Meghan told her, according to both the Daily Mail and The Sun. “I’m single and I really love English men.”
Cundy said Meghan also explained that she “could only be in ‘Suits’ for so long and that Hollywood was a really brutal place. She had not made a breakthrough, and said she would feel at home in London.”
Cundy said Meghan set her sights on the TV show “Made in Chelsea,” a series that chronicles the lives of affluent young people living in London. Meghan wanted to be part of the Chelsea crowd, both on screen and off, Cundy said.
“She worked hard to get in with that crowd,” Cundy added. Through these circles, she eventually became acquainted with people who were friends with Harry, according to the Daily Mail.
During what Cundy described as a “networking” trip to London in 2016, Meghan met Queen Elizabeth’s grandson. And the rest is contemporary royal history.
Cundy said she exchanged texts with Meghan after news of her royal romance came out.
“I texted saying: ‘Oh my God, I heard about Harry,'” Cundy recalled. “And she was like: ‘Yeah, I know. We’ll try and hook up.’ She was probably told by the Palace to end contact with people she befriended in the media.”
“I was literally ghosted by her,” Cundy said.
This on-off portrait of Meghan — as a social climber who discards relationships when they no longer are useful to her — returns more than a week after Meghan was the subject of a flattering CBS special hosted by Gayle King, another of her and Harry’s A-list friends. The special aired a couple of weeks after she gave birth to their first child, son Archie Harrison, on May 6.
For the CBS special, Meghan and Harry appeared to give King and her U.S. network unique, behind-the-scenes access by authorizing some of her friends to speak on her behalf. The friends, in describing how Meghan was adjusting to life in the royal family, pointedly denied reports that she is “difficult.”
These reports started in the U.K. tabloids and may have been leaked by palace courtiers who were concerned about her global popularity overshadowing Prince William and Kate Middleton.
In the CBS special, a crying Daniel Martin, Meghan’s longtime friend and makeup artist, told King, “I know her so well and I know she doesn’t deserve all this negative press.”
Martin also insisted there is “no truth” to headlines that have portrayed his friend as “Duchess Difficult.”
But it was expected that King’s special, and the evident special access she enjoyed with Meghan and Harry, could complicate the royal couple’s already rocky relationship with the British media.
According to the Daily Beast, the U.K. media has grown increasingly anxious about being “sidelined” by the Duchess and Duke of Sussex in favor of major U.S. networks, such as CBS, raising questions about whether media resentment would fuel further negative coverage about the couple.
This Daily Mail report, with on-the-record interviews from some of Meghan’s ex-friends, appears to be in line with some of that further negative coverage. The Daily Mail portrayed a pre-Harry Meghan as an American starlet “fishing in the shallower end of the showbiz bond.”
Before Meghan met Harry, “you could find her cozying up to a male model on the red carpet, flirting on social media with a former ‘X Factor’ winner and deliberating whether to go on a date” with a soccer star, the Daily Mail opined.
“Of course, hanging out with D-listers was never really going to be the right fit for ambitious and sophisticated Meghan Markle,” the Daily Mail added.
The Daily Mail story also recounts how Meghan’s time living in Toronto, where she filmed “Suits,” proved useful for her career and social ambitions. While in Toronto, she became friendly with Jessica Mulroney, the daughter-in-law of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and with Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the wife of current Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. Her Toronto social circle revolved around the exclusive members’ club Soho House.
Meghan’s estranged father and half-siblings have long pushed the idea that the former actress, from a middle-class California background, allegedly turned her back on people once she began dating Harry.
Meghan’s marriage to Engelson also ended “abruptly,” with Meghan sending him her diamond engagement and wedding rings back by registered mail, author Andrew Morton wrote in his biography “Meghan: A Hollywood Princess.”
British TV host Piers Morgan also has been outspoken in his criticism of the duchess. He told the Daily Mail that Meghan sought his friendship, advice and an appearance on his show, “Good Morning Britain,” in 2016 when she felt she was at a career crossroads.
Morgan claimed he spent 90 minutes at his local pub with her, talking about how she could raise her profile. But Morgan said he never heard from Meghan again after she had dinner with friends the following night. This is the dinner at which she met Harry.
Morgan echoed Cundy’s impression that Meghan was hoping to make her mark in the United Kingdom, while also finding an English boyfriend.
“Meghan Markle is a self-obsessed professional actress who has landed the role of her life and is determined to milk it for all she’s worth,” Morgan said, according to the Daily Mail. “She’s spent most of the past 20 years cozying up to people until they serve no more use to her, then airbrushing them out of her life without so much as: ‘Goodbye, loser!’ I know because I was one of them.”
Another former friend and colleague who said Meghan “ghosted” her was Gina Nelthorpe-Crowne, who found the future duchess to be “hugely charismatic” when they first met in 2014.
Nelthorpe-Crowne told the Daily Mail she soon became both Meghan’s agent and friend. She said Meghan gushed to her about how she and Prince Harry were “going to change the world” after the two took a romantic trip to Botswana in 2016.
Nelthorpe-Crowne said she last heard from Meghan when the future duchess told her she was giving up her career and terminating their contract.
“Meghan likes to move on,” Nelthorpe-Crowne told the Daily Mail.
